Emotions have been running high in the past couple of days about the traffic mess on Monday when tens of thousands of workers tried to rush to work with much of the public transport system still paralyzed by Super Typhoon Mangkhut. While the commuters' frustration was understandable, it is more constructive now to think about how to avoid similar problems from happening in future.

It is consensus that preparation work was quite well done before the typhoon came. Advance warning was very sufficient as the public was warned about the oncoming storm and its intensity even before it hit the Philippines. Cross-departmental meetings were held more than once to coordinate efforts within the government. Residents in low-lying areas were evacuated. Decades of dangerous-slope strengthening and flood control projects have spared Hong Kong from deadly landslides and flooding, which killed many in other places also hit by Mangkhut.

Hong Kong survived the ferocious storm with flying colors, with no deaths and not too much serious damage to properties. That is most important.

But what needs to be done in the aftermath cannot be overlooked either. Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor was correct to point out that there is no mechanism or legal basis to call off a day's work when the typhoon signal No 8 was canceled. But is there nothing else that could be done?

The crux of the problem this time is the trees. The reason many bus routes were still out of service after the storm was that many roads, including major arteries, were still blocked by fallen trees. Trees are significant to urban areas for aesthetic and health reasons. But they must be well maintained. In our city, even under fair weather, whole trees or just branches fall down from time to time, endangering passers-by, sometimes fatally. No wonder as many as 1,500 cases of fallen trees were reported during the storm. In some countries, like Singapore, every roadside tree's information, including what problems it has, is recorded by computer and the trees are very well maintained. Hong Kong must redouble its tree maintenance efforts like what it has done with dangerous slopes.

The great number of fallen trees must have imposed a very heavy burden on frontline emergency service workers, including firemen who cut fallen trees into pieces so that they could be removed by other workers. Apparently, after Mangkhut left, there wasn't enough manpower to clear the trees in a manner timely enough for residents to get back to work or school.

With increasingly powerful typhoons expected to descend on the city due to global climate change, the government must not rely solely on the manpower previously found to be sufficient to handle lesser storms. Since typhoons do not visit us frequently enough to warrant expansion of the regular establishment, the authorities could organize civil bodies, similar to the Civil Aid Service, to help get the city back to normal after serious natural disasters.

(HK Edition 09/19/2018 page8)